Three Times Liz Olivet Gave Advice (And One Time She Got It)
by ns.108
Summary: Dr. Elizabeth Olivet gets advice, and occasionally, receives some. Set circa seasons four through six. Liz/Mike Logan, implied Jack/Claire and other characters of that time.
1. Chapter 1

**Title/author: **"Three Times Liz Olivet Gave Advice, and One Time She Got It" by n.s.

**Rating: **T for mild language and subject matter

**Summary**: Dr. Elizabeth Olivet gets advice. Set circa seasons four through six. Liz/Mike Logan.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of these characters. This story is brought to you by the 20+ year old reruns of "Law & Order" that coincide with my kids' nap times.

x

She had known parking would be a nightmare at the church, so she'd taken a cab. When it lurched to a stop in the midday traffic, she saw him sitting on the steps. After paying her fare and weaving through the double-parked black vehicles, Elizabeth Olivet approached him slowly.

"Hello, Detective," she said, drawing the older man's attention from studying his tie.

Lennie Briscoe looked up, and in his signature manner, smiled without joy.

"Ah, hello there, Doctor."

Liz nodded towards the church. "Did the service start?"

Lennie made a move to hesitantly look over his shoulder, but couldn't quite look at the building behind him.

"Uh, no. No. They uh, they're still filing in. Standing room only." He resumed staring down at the cement steps under his feet.

"She was quite a woman," Liz acknowledged, looking up at the church with similar hesitancy. If she went in, if she sat down and listened to the eulogies and watched the six men—_would Mike be one of them?_—carry the coffin out to the hearse behind her, it would be real. Claire Kincaid would be gone. She had put on a black suit before work, knowing after her morning sessions she would be here and still she wasn't ready to acknowledge it, not fully.

"She sure was," she murmured mostly to herself, as Lennie was miles away. "Can I escort you in?"

"I'm just getting some air," he said with a casual voice, but a pained expression. "You go ahead without me."

Liz pushed her purse farther up her arm and hitched her skirt up slightly so she could delicately sit beside him.

"The air _is_ nice today."

Lennie scoffed.

"Some joke. Sun goes on shining, flowers keep on blooming. Like nothing happened," he looked at her then, his eyes glistening with self-loathing and tears. "But that's not the worst part. It's the nights."

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing."

Lennie closed his eyes and nodded, then opened them and looked away. "You said it."

"Actually Ernest Hemingway did," Liz admitted, placing her hand on his gently, trying to ground him here in the moment and not wherever his tortured mind was taking him. "But he had a point. Have you been meeting with your sponsor? Going to meetings?"

"Yeah. He and I have had a standing date every morning, and my home meeting is right down from the precinct, on my way home every night," Lennie replied, tears edging to the rim of his lower lids.

"I'm glad to hear that," Liz said quietly, genuinely. "She would be, too."

"I keep seeing her face," Lennie whispered, his voice breaking. He used the hand she wasn't holding to crush his face and push back the tears. Liz waited, allowed him two stifled sobs, before speaking.

"Is she angry?"

Face moistened with tears but his voice steady again, Lennie replied "No, she wasn't. She was just a kid, really. Helping out a useless old bastard. And it cost her everything. Hell of a world."

Liz didn't move, put applied more pressure to his hand.

"She was helping a friend. A friend she cared about," she told him, her voice calm, slow, and soft.

"Remember her that way. And remember yourself that way."

x


	2. Chapter 2

**Title/author: **"Three Times Liz Olivet Gave Advice, and One Time She Got It" by n.s.

**Rating: **T for mild language and subject matter

**Summary**: Dr. Elizabeth Olivet gets advice. Set circa seasons four through six. Liz/Mike Logan.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of these characters. This story is brought to you by the 20+ year old reruns of "Law & Order" that coincide with my kids' nap times.

x

"Who sent you? Van Buren…or Lennie?"

Liz froze, her hand mid-sentence on the notebook paper pressed up against the apartment door. She had come to see him, sure, but had been secretly relieved when he wasn't there. The tone in his voice—drunk, angry, looking for a fight, a grenade with the pin out waiting for her to breathe wrong—told her she should have written a little faster. Whether she went to war with him or raised the white flag, the battle was had.

"Can't an old friend just drop in on another old friend to see how he's doing?" she asked, casually, folding the paper between her hands and turning to face him slowly to allow herself to prepare for what she might see.

"Especially when he won't take her calls," she added after meeting his eyes, which were tired and red. _Why do you do this to yourself, _her heart asked him, and herself.

"An old friend?" Mike Logan asked coldly. "Is that what I am?"

"If this isn't a good time, I can come back," Liz said as he sauntered up to her, keeping her voice even. "Or we can get lunch."

"A very frien-d-l-y meal," Mike said the word as if it tasted bad in his mouth. He stopped just in front of her.

"I don't want to be your friend, Liz," he murmured, his eyes shifting to her mouth.

"Mike…" Liz deliberately stepped back, away from him and the door in the same motion, keeping a safe distance between them. "I just want to make sure you're all right. That you're not—,"

"—Look, I'm _fine_," he spat the words out as he fished his keys out of his pocket and drunkenly jammed them into the locks, throwing them open forcefully. "Never been better. Always wanted to walk a fucking beat and settle parking disputes. Murder was getting boring."

Liz didn't follow him in, but stood in the open door as he slammed into the apartment, throwing his beloved brown leather jacket into a heap and dragging his already askew tie off.

"You should get some sleep. This is a bad time for us to talk. I'll come by tomorrow, buy you breakfast," she suggested as he roughly uncapped a bottle of whiskey. Dr. Olivet knew that following him in was a black hole, that she couldn't possibly function as a mental health professional in this moment, in this place, with this particular man. Liz's hands burned with the urge to grab him and shake him, shake the anger, the pain, the _stubbornness, _out…and then to hold him.

"If you're waiting for a good time, you might be waiting a long time, doc," he sneered at her, holding eye contact as he downed at least two fingers of whiskey on top of God knows how many others. "In or out, I'm not paying to heat all of Chelsea. Won't be able to afford it on a flatfoot salary."

It was a challenge. A friend would be able to stay. Liz pressed her lips together and stepped inside, bringing the door shut behind her.

"What exactly did you _think_ was going to happen?" she hissed at him, her own anger with him bubbling to the surface as he refilled his glass. Fighting fire with fire wasn't exactly a great strategy but it was safer for her right now.

"You assaulted a _public official _in front of _200_ witnesses, 30 of which had television cameras."

"That hump got what was coming to him!" Mike shouted, pointing at the world beyond his apartment, as if it wasn't just Durban, but everyone who he hated. It wasn't far from the truth.

"Murders someone in cold fucking blood and then has the balls to act like he's some kind of—,"

"A lot of people have something coming to them!" Liz snapped, matching his volume momentarily but then bringing her voice back down to her session voice, calm and concise and neutral. "Was it really worth flushing your entire career down the toilet?"

"In the moment, yeah, it was. Felt real good," Mike said with his teeth clenched, but then switched, moving toward her suggestively, closing the space between them again so when he spoke again, she felt his breath on her face. "Not as good as some things, but close."

Not surrendering any ground, Liz lifted her chin. "Get off it, Mike. In the moment you didn't give a damn. As usual. You figured they'd look past it, _again_, and now you're angry they won't, that you crossed the line one too many times. You never think for a _moment_ about what the consequences of your actions might be, and then when they manifest you act like you're the victim—,"

"Are we still talking about Durban? Or is this about that prick who killed Max? Or is it about _us_?" he bit the word off, his eyes darkened.

"I told you, I'm here as a friend, Mike," Liz said firmly, her voice doing a great job of deceiving what her heart and body wanted to do.

Mike smiled, without joy, and leaned toward her to rest his hand on the door behind her head.

"You keep saying that," he whispered, his bowed head so close that he practically spoke the next words into her mouth. "Who are you trying to convince, me or you?"

Liz closed her eyes, took a steadying breath that he cut off by pressing his lips to hers, pulling the air out of her lungs with a long, hard, desperate kiss. She let it go on for three heart beats before pressing her hand into his chest, the single most difficult thing she'd done in a long time. He relented, but didn't move any farther back than she pushed him.

Swallowing tears, Liz took another shaky breath and said, "I thought you might need a friend right now."

"I got plenty," Mike said with disgust. He held her gaze, and she didn't blink, or take her hand off of his chest. Another few heart beats, and he stepped away.

"I'm glad you think so," Liz said as the relief washed over her. She knew, and knew he knew, she wouldn't be able to stop him a second time. She crossed her arms over her chest as he leaned against the back of his couch and turned the empty glass over in his hand.

"Hold on to them," she continued, opening the door. "And maybe let go of some of the other garbage."

"I would but I don't know any good shrinks," he retorted, but his heart wasn't in it. It was as cold as the draft from the hallway.

"You can go around blaming everyone else. Or you can grow up." Liz stepped outside and brought the door half way closed before saying, "Call me if you ever decide to do the latter. I'm a good friend."

x


End file.
